American spies: Snowden deserves to die

posted at 4:01 pm on January 17, 2014 by Allahpundit

And when they say he deserves to die, they don’t mean due process, a treason conviction, and lethal injection. (He hasn’t been charged with treason.) They mean a jab from an umbrella tip laced with Polonium on a busy Moscow street when he’s not looking.

“In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. “A lot of people share this sentiment.”

“I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon official, a former special forces officer, said bluntly. “I do not take pleasure in taking another human beings life, having to do it in uniform, but he is single-handedly the greatest traitor in American history.”…

“His name is cursed every day over here,” a defense contractor told BuzzFeed, speaking from an overseas intelligence collections base. “Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him.”…

“I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly,” [an Army intelligence officer] said. “Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.”

Two questions. One, via Andy Levy:

Snowden’s argument all along is that he had no choice but to go on the lam abroad. If he’d stayed and tried to follow proper whistleblower procedure, he’d have been punished severely. Intelligence officers fantasizing in print about killing him only proves the point. Pro tip: If your nemesis is busy trying to convince people that the security state has turned sinister, you might want to go light on the “it’d be awesome to shoot him in the face” talking points.

Two: How does a story like this get put together? “Hi, I’m from BuzzFeed. I’m wondering: Have you ever daydreamed about assassinating Edward Snowden?” “Boy, have I! Let me tell you in detail.” What?

Make sure to read the whole BF post, though, not just the excerpt. Near the end, Benny Johnson quotes intel officials who say some of the bad guys have stopped using the telecom platforms exposed by Snowden and even that some of the NSA’s sources in the field have become “useless” since the leaks began. That’s a predictable result from a massive intelligence breach: If your name’s on a list of American informants and suddenly there’s reason to believe that list has gotten loose, you have good reasons to rethink the relationship. Makes me wonder what would happen if Snowden’s maybe-mythical-maybe-not “doomsday” trove of encrypted NSA documents ended up being published online somehow. Supposedly, Snowden’s uploaded the documents to various servers and arranged it so that several confidants would receive a password to decrypt them if something were to happen to him. It’s his insurance policy against exactly the sort of assassination scenario imagined in the BuzzFeed piece. (It also seems, perversely, like an assassination incentive for enemy governments. If China, say, knows that U.S. intelligence will be blamed if Snowden turns up dead and that his death will trigger the leaking of the NSA’s most sensitive secrets, why wouldn’t they take him out?) No one knows what’s in the “doomsday” trove but Jack Goldsmith hears that most of the 1.7 million documents stolen by Snowden relate to U.S. military operations. It may be that he’s prepared to compromise American troops all over the world as revenge if any harm comes to him. Even if harm doesn’t come to him, who knows what foreign intel agencies are capable of now in turns of bleeding-edge decryption technology. Maybe they’ll find the “doomsday” trove and unveil it themselves.

Exit question: Why hasn’t U.S. intel surreptitiously leaked details about other nations’ own dubious surveillance practices? If you want to put Snowden on the defensive without physically harming him while re-focusing outrage abroad at people’s own governments, feeding a few reporters info about what his good friends in Russia and Brazil are up to is one place to start.

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… because the logic your using condemn Snowden as a traitor has a fatal flaw. From Lawfare blog article dated January 10, 2014 linked:

One hears that the worst of the Snowden documents (from the perspective of the USG) have not yet been released, and one wonders what that might mean. Yesterday’s story that “most of the documents he took concerned current military operations” might provide the beginning of an answer (though I expect that another part of the answer is that Snowden took documents concerning even more sensitive and surprising intelligence relationships than have yet been disclosed).

Representatives Rogers and Ruppersberger, referencing a classified DIA report, say that “Snowden stole approximately 1.7 million intelligence files that ‘concern vital operations of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.’” I would guess that a good number of these 1.7 million files concern the activities of Special Operations Forces.

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Snowden has NEVER published any document directly related to U.S. military operations.

Everyone on here yelling for Snowden’s blood are basing their position on third hand reports coming from the most treasonous, corrupt and pathological group of liars ever to serve in one administration.

So … despite the FACTS to date which come from a small set of documents detailing the size and scope of the surveillance state Obama has built, YOUR position is you want Snowden dead becuase LYING LIARS you regularly denounce on Hot Air are claiming on a “super secret squirrel basis” that Snowden did bad things.

I looked up data on the number of phone calls made in the United States. It’s around 3 billion per day or over 1 trillion per year. There are 294 billion E-mails per day or 94 trillion a year. In terms data that is anywhere from 1-10 terabytes per day of storage. If you think the NSA can listen or read all those phone calls and E-mails then you need to leave Colorado and get yourself straight.

Back the 1980s the NSA was reputed to have a program called Echelon which supposedly recorded and screen telecommunications using key words because even then there was no way to listen to them. Prism sounds like a 21st Century version of Echelon for the digital world. In principle it probably enhances your privacy instead of violating it because NSA is looking for specific cues. Yes, in theory they can look into your life but since most your lives are boring who would care?

Math is your friend.

jerryofva on January 17, 2014 at 5:44 PM

Until you no longer become unremarkable or use “the word of the day” or irritate the wrong person or somehow pique their interest.

Then they have every single phone call, email, comment, movement and action on file that you’ve ever done.

Sounds to me like there are a number of traitors in Washington DC who have betrayed their oaths to the Constitution, have become a threat to the freedom, liberty and prosperity of the American people and are themselves deserving of the punishment they wish upon Snowden.

While I’m not saying that the majority of people here think Snowden is a hero, I believe that the fascists who wish torture and death on Snowden are only a handfull or two. Every one of them who saw the headline and has an account here: I guarantee you they expressed in this thread their vicious hatred of Snowden. They couldn’t help themselves, they are so despicable. What is that, five or ten? Most of the rest of us are either on the fence or think he’s a hero who exposed how prominent fascism has become in our government.

I’ve been asking all along where the line between traitor and whistle-blower is. I guess the fact that he did not use the proper channels makes him a traitor to many people. If he had used the correct process and the info did get out; I wonder if the same people calling him a traitor would be calling him a hero.

Dr. Frank Enstine on January 17, 2014 at 4:28 PM

Nope, they wouldn’t. Cockroaches don’t like it when you turn on the light. For them, process is nothing but an excuse.

Best solution I’ve heard… prosecute him to the absolute fullest extent of the law.

And then pardon him.

Sarjex on January 17, 2014 at 4:33 PM

I doubt they could get a conviction from a jury unless it’s a kangaroo court and the outcome is rigged… and I think it would be rigged, just like the investigation of the IRS targeting DC’s political opposition, Benghazi, Fast and Furious and so forth.

“Exposed”?? Was it some sort of secret that an America-hating POS was leading the Executive branch and turning all of the arms of government against the citizenry? Was it a secret that barky was strong-arming corporations into doing the feral government’s bidding against the citizenry? Was it a secret that barky’s Executive branch had come right out and announced (YEARS AGO) that conservatives were “potential domestic terrorists” who needed to be watched and pounced on? Was it a secret that the feral government has been coddling muslims and harassing Americans as a matter of routine, these days?

If you think that Snowden “exposed” much of anything that wasn’t already known (except for how he told about legitimate activities against foreigners, which is what the friggin NSA is supposed to be doing) then I don’t know what to say. It has been very obvious that the feral government under Barky is totally out of control and barky and many of his retarded junta needed to be impeached and criminally prosecuted. Snowden contributed nothing much to that. He released info about illegal domestic spying that was also known by many, already, but he couldn’t stop there and went into areas that the NSA was actually supposed to be working in.

lastly, Snowden was a barky supporter so that pretty much says anything anyone really needed to know about him.

Had Snowden only leaked information on the NSA’s activities in the US, hed be a sympathetic character. Although what he did would have been illegal, it would have gone with the spirit of the law.

DJ Rick on January 17, 2014 at 4:57 PM

Snowden is trying to stay alive. So far there is only one country that has offered him safe harbor, it’s not like he has options. The only hope he has for the future is the good will of people around the globe that he is trying to earn, and so far he hasn’t released anything that harms the American people, quite the contrary.

Chillax, America, it’s just your friends and neighbors spying on you, without the friends and neighbors part.

Christien on January 17, 2014 at 5:10 PM

I know, in Nazi Germans it was friends and neighbors that did what they did to the Jews and others, but in the modern world that’s not true, they are people in Washington DC and elsewhere, which might as well be a foreign country to me over here on the West coast. Increasingly, I wish it were a foreign country.

Our congress is full of crony-capitalist crooks that serve K-Street, and the police-state and surveillance-state industries have a lot of money and, I believe, lobbyists in DC. And besides that the NSA probably has all the dirt on all the many crooks in Congress, the SCOTUS and the WH, and essentially owns their azzez.

Have you ever considered if perhaps the reason that Obama and Congress don’t reign in the NSA’s obviously unconstitutional activities is because they’re afraid the NSA will spill the beans on Washington DC?

Yes, in theory they can look into your life but since most your lives are boring who would care?

Math is your friend.

jerryofva on January 17, 2014 at 5:44 PM

Heck yeah! If you aren’t doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about.

So lighten up, folks, and don’t worry about turn key tyranny. Sure, someday some elitist may take a liking to your wife or girlfriend or property, look up your file and put you away for life so that they can have their way, but it’s not like they’re sitting there every moment listening to you every word. Nothing to see here, move along.

Snowden deserves some prison time for violating his oath, breaking secrecy agreements, and screwing with national security unnecessarily by releasing materials haphazardly and giving away details to our enemies that went beyond the scope of his “whisteblowing”.

-Jeepers, Snowden must have been a really high level admin, or at least a Supergenius, to know so much about the capabilities and function of the NSA.

-The NSA mustn’t have any way at all of blocking illicit copying of their files, much less know anything at all about when their computer files are accessed and copied. They should have hired a computer consultant or something to let them know how to prevent such a breech.

-The omnipotent NSA must have no way of monitoring when such a high level and knowledgeable employee hops a plane to Hong Kong.

Snowden’s argument all along is that he had no choice but to go on the lam abroad. If he’d stayed and tried to follow proper whistleblower procedure, he’d have been punished severely. Intelligence officers fantasizing in print about killing him only proves the point. Pro tip: If your nemesis is busy trying to convince people that the security state has turned sinister, you might want to go light on the “it’d be awesome to shoot him in the face” talking points.

I disagree. I actually found the spies’ comments very consistent with a group of people who KNOW they are the good guys, who KNOW they are doing good and important work … and have someone come along and destroy what they’ve spent life times building.

Imagine you were a medical researcher on the verge of a cure and some leftist activists destroy your research for some cause or other. And then half the planet calls the people who destroyed your life’s work – important work for all of us – calls them heroes. I imagine that’s how these folks feel.

If they were the dark and evil shadowy figures that Snowden pretends, I imagine they’d never say such things. They’d offer a greasy smile and open arms of forgiveness. Then slit his throat later.

The President of the U.S. just had to announce reforms of the bureaucracy as a direct result of leaks from this person. You really have to engage in some philosophical contortionism to not define him as a whistleblower.